The Alexa Traffic Rank gives a statement about the popularity of the tested website.
"The traffic rank is based on three months of aggregated historical traffic data from millions of Alexa Toolbar users and is a combined measure of page views and users (reach). As a first step, Alexa computes the reach and number of page views for all sites on the Web on a daily basis.The main Alexa traffic rank is based on the geometric mean of these two quantities averaged over time (so that the rank of a site reflects both the number of users who visit that site as well as the number of pages on the site viewed by those users)."
Source and further information: www.alexa.com.
There are either no data available regarding a traffic ranking for the tested web site, or the ranking needs definite improvement.
Intros inhibit website users to access the information they were looking for. In addition they convey the impression that the website owners place more importance on the design than on the offer of information or solutions to their customers. A website needs to instantly communicate what it is about and what a user can expect to find. The website must also take account of the little time available to the website user. It should be noted that users spend in average only 2 minutes on a website.
An intro page to allow language or regional choice is unnecessary, as there is a possibility to identify this automatically.
Javascript intros for re-directing and configuration purposes are also discouraged, even though users hardly notice them, as they have an impact on search engines and accessibility. Nowadays there are better alternatives to be used server-side.
Please note that you may not be able to see an intro page, depending on language settings, IP address and other user criteria. The intro page may, however, show for other users, and it is available for search engines, spiders and bots.
Source:
"Prioritizing Web Usability" by Jakob Nielsen/Hoa Loranger
Further information:
http://www.kundennutzen.ch/intros.php
http://nitzsche.info/de.pub-2-vorschaltseiten.php
The site most likely uses an intro page.
Each page of a website should have its own page title, which reflects the content of the page itself. This carries many advantages, e.g. page titles are used for bookmarking and are read by search engines. Unique page titles therefore lead to search engine optimisation.
Further information:
http://www.socialpatterns.com/search-engine-optimization/writing-better-titles/
The page titles remain the same throughout the tested website.
The content of the website needs to be well structured with logical and meaningful titles (h1, h2, h3...). Meaningful words which are important for the understanding of the text, need to be placed at the beginning of the title, as web users mainly only perceive the first few words of a title. Titles should be no longer than 60 characters.
Titles can also have a positive impact on search machine rankings.
Source and further information:
"Prioritizing Web Usability" by Jakob Nielsen/Hoa Loranger.
The tested website does not comply with this requirement.
Pop-ups tend to annoy web users, as they appear suddenly and cannot be controlled. In addition, many users associate pop-ups with untrustworthy gambling and porn sites. User-friendly websites should therefore not include pop-ups, with the following exception: a print-preview of a page displayed as a pop-up.
Source:
"Prioritizing Web Usability" by Jakob Nielsen/Hoa Loranger
Further information:
http://www.usability.ch/Alt_nav/Alertbox/NJ_20041206.htm
The tested website is coded to display pop-ups.
Marking previously visited hyperlinks helps users to identify which pages of the website have previously been read. In other words, according to Nielsen the navigation interface should answer three essential questions: "Where am I?", "Where have I been?" and "Where can I go?"
Source and further information:
"Prioritizing Web Usability" by Jakob Nielsen/Hoa Loranger and "Designing Web Usability" by Jakob Nielsen
The tested website does not support fully this type of marking.
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A potential warning has been identified.
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A potential warning has been identified.
Not all visually impaired people make use of technical support to navigate on the internet. The feature to increase fonts is an important element to ensure that all information of the website can be read by all users. Even people who are not visually impaired need to increase the font sometimes. At the same time, an increasing number of older people surf the web; they too need a feature to increase the font. To this purpose, it is important to define the font size not in pixel, but in percentage or "em".
Source and further information:
"Prioritizing Web Usability" by Jakob Nielsen/Hoa Loranger
The font on the tested website cannot be increased and defined with the automated browser feature "Text Size".
Many web users use two to three search words. Particularly web users who are focused on their search use sentences rather than single keywords, in order to narrow the search.
Do not limit yourself with keywords, but use use search phrases like "feed the dog" or "vaccinate the baby". For the most used search phrases, well known search engines and directories display special offers. As an example: www.yahoo.com on http://searchmarketing.yahoo.com/de_CH/rc/srch/oyr.php#.
Source and further information:
"Prioritizing Web Usability" by Jakob Nielsen/Hoa Loranger
The tested website does not use search phrases.
Separating design and structure of the website carries great advantages. The sharper the distinction, the more independent the two areas are. A lack of such a distinction is also called a "spaghetti mark-up" or a "tag-soup" (from the term "HTML tag").
Nowadays it is easy to save colours, type fonts, design images and to a large extent even the layout of the website in CSS files (CSS = Cascading Style Sheet).
Further information:
http://www.style-sheets.de/guide/grundlagen/warum_css
http://www.vorsprungdurchwebstandards.de/theory/retro-coding/
Hint for IT technicians: "Code" does not refer to javascript, but to HTML source.
The tested website contains spaghetti mark-up; morevover, it is not or not fully defined in CSS Format.
Blinking and moving text should be avoided. website users would like to read at their own pace and usually they class moving text as unimportant ads. Static text can be read quicker by users and does force them to wait for returning text. Furthermore, problems may arise when printing the page.
Source and further information: "Prioritizing Web Usability" by Jakob Nielsen/Hoa Loranger, as well as hints on http://www.barrierefreies-webdesign.de/
Blinking or moving text was found on the tested website.
HTML is only one of a series of markup languages, though it is the best known one. HTML is relatively old and has seen various, rather different variations. The Document Type Declaration indicates which markup language and which version of it has been used. A sorting software, e.g. a web browser, can understand this indication.
Source and further information: http://de.selfhtml.org/html/allgemein/grundgeruest.htm.
The tested website does not contain any Document Type Declaration. New websites should not be built that way. Older websites should not be updated without a significant upgrade, as most browsers would render the website differently if the HTML source code is invalid. This aspect should be considered for any upgrade.
The logical connection between definition and form field is missing if the form fields lack an explicit title.
This means that in the instance of a linear form, it is not apparent which definition belongs to which fiels. This is why the element LABEL was introduced with the attribute for, allowing the explicit definition for form fields.
Using the element LABEL allows Screen-Readerusers in particular to view the definition of the form field directly in the form field itself.
Source:
http://www.barrierefreies-webdesign.de/knowhow/formulare/label.html. Further information can be found in the W3C accessibility guidelines (12.4 Associate labels explicitly with their controls, Guideline 12, Accessibility Guidelines for Web Content 1.0, W3C recommendations 5th May 1999http://www.w3c.de/Trans/WAI/webinhalt.html) und http://de.selfhtml.org/html/formulare/strukturieren.htm.
Form fields on the tested website do not contain correct labels.
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A potential warning has been identified.
Older web projects were often designed with so-called "empty images" (i.e. images without content, used as placeholder). This technique is now outdated and should be replaced with CSS features such as "Padding" and "Margin". This allows an increased performance of the website, as well as a strict separation between design and content, and an abstraction of the design from the structure.
Further information:
http://seybold.jan-andresen.de/05killer.php
The tested website contains blank images.